The wind was loudest on the ship for a long moment, then Gjallandi cleared his throat.
‘The Lay of Baldur,’ he began and Onund whacked him on the shoulder.
‘Shut up and bail,’ he growled. ‘There are too many fish in the boat and not all of them are escaped from that story.’
The Witch-Queen’s Crew
The sea creamed and smoked where it was not black as a slice of night and the spray smoked in Erling’s face, so that he turned away and let the raggles of his hair flail one cheek for a moment.
Od, unmoved by anything other than keeping his blade dry, grinned back at him from a pearled face; he sat alone, for Gudrod’s crew would not go near him if he could be avoided. They did not do this with any sneering, for the last thing they wanted was to annoy the beautiful boy, so they busied themselves with little tasks that kept them from sitting near him.
There were enough tasks to go round, Erling decided moodily, since the wind was thrawn in the rigging lines, singing like a harp while the waves hit the unmoved dragon-beast with a shuddering power that broke them into shards and smoke.
Standing up in this, watching the horizon, was Gudrod, one hand on a rigging line, one just touching the sealskin pouch where the letter they had taken from Holmtun was snugged up, warm and dry with his other precious treasure, the cloth nine-squares and bone counters of ’tafl.
One is as unreadable to me as the other, Erling thought bitterly, remembering the sighs and sneers of Gudrod over his playing. That left his mood as black as the sky behind them, where clouds, massive as bulls, were silvered by flickers of light.
‘We have to make for land,’ Hadd screamed out. Gudrod did not need his shipmaster to tell him, though he suspected they had skipped under the worst of the storm, which was roaring and stamping closer to Mann. Still, they had a wind coming out of the east which wanted to push them west and contrary currents slamming waves into them from the north. The thought of running with the wind turned his bowels to water, for he had heard of others who had done this and missed Ireland entirely, never to be heard from again.
‘Hy,’ he roared back and Hadd left the mastfish and stumbled to his side, where he did not have to bellow his fears for the others to hear. Hy was not far off but a small island, hard to approach at the best of times, never mind at night in a storm. Difficult landing on an open beach where a mistake would rip the bottom off.
‘The wind is wrong and the wave with it,’ he said, his mouth fish-breath close to Gudrod’s ear. ‘It will be a hard row.’
Gudrod looked at his men and knew they needed something to shove fire into them, something more than muscle. He was the Witch-Queen’s son and he had been around his ma long enough to have learned a few things. He nodded to Erling, then to the miserable, bound figure of Hoskuld.
It was a right shame, he thought to himself, stepping up to the prow, an iron-headed axe in each out-thrust hand, bellowing out old chants to Aegir and Ran and Thor, for he had hoped to bring Hoskuld all the way back to his mother, who would know if the old trader had anything left worth telling.
Still, there was the writing in Latin-runes, which probably told all there was to know and he planned to sail into Hy and get the monks there to read it. He threw the axes over the side for Thor’s consideration, then drew his seax and turned to Hoskuld, whose face was stiff with fear, for there was too much sailing-salt in his blood for him not to know what would happen.
He wanted to tell Gudrod of the three gold coins sewn in the hem of his tunic but stitched his lips thin on that, for he knew Gudrod would then get the coins and would still use the knife.
The spray pearled on the silver of the blade and Hoskuld looked at it, then at Gudrod’s set face. Then he spat, though the gesture was lost a little when the wind sprayed it back in his own beard. Gudrod laid one hand gently on the old man’s wind-whipped hair, feeling the flinch in the man then.
Hoskuld’s eyes grew wide and panicked as a hare; Gudrod felt him shake then, heard him squeal, but the words were whipped away by the wind — something about his tunic. He gripped, pulled the throat up and sliced. The men howled as the blood flashed, whipping away in red ropes by the wind. Hoskuld, like an old anchor stone, toppled over the side and was gone; the crew scrambled to their rowing places.
An hour later, the wind died and the sea settled to a long, slow, black heave, like a sated wolf breathing in its sleep.
Crowbone’s Crew
‘We are turning,’ Stick-Starer screamed and it was not a request. Onund, his hair and beard all to one side and stiff as a hackle, bellowed something back at him, but the wind ripped it away. They traded mouthings while the rain and wind tore and spat; Crowbone saw, in the blue-sparked dark, the tight, grim faces of men, wet with the sweat of fear as much as spray and rain.
‘We have lost the shore,’ Onund bellowed, forcing himself close to Crowbone’s ear. ‘He is guessing where it is.’
Now Crowbone was afraid. They had seen the land in the last of what passed for day, a silver sliver of light below a great black glower of thunderclouds, and started to row for it. Then the grey mirk had sheeted down on them, the wind drove it sideways like a sleeting of arrows and they had lost sight of that thin, dark lifeline. Stick- Starer had raised the sail a notch and they ran on with the wind, hoping it did not plough them into unseen rocks as they slanted towards where the land had been.
They needed ship-luck and wave-luck. The deck felt pulpy to Crowbone and he fancied he could feel the Shadow wallow, fat with shipped water; he felt sick at the thought of being plunged into that madly shifting black maw and, at the same time, almost welcomed it, for he had dived in it daily in his ringmail, threshing and choking, training himself to slither out of the stuff underwater. That had been in quiet shallows, all the same, where he could recover the byrnie.
Then the yellow bitch barked. The roar and hiss of the wind chopped the sound off with a vicious abruptness, but the dog stood on splayed, staggering legs, stiff-ruffed and shaking with every bark, as if its whole body was forcing them out.
Berto went to it, turned and pointed out into the dark. In the next flare of blue-white, the curve of shingle between thick forests etched itself on the back of all eyes and a delighted Onund thumped Stick-Starer on the shoulder, hard enough to spurt water.
He sprang to the steersman, already helped by Halk and two others, while men fought the sail back on to the spar, gripped the oars and started to pull; laboriously, the Shadow turned, wallowingly and rocking like a sick cow, the rowers hauling and grunting. One fell sideways and men hauled him away; Rovald slid to the bench and began to pull, while others hunkered, waiting to relieve those who collapsed.
There was a long time of wind and rain and cursing. The Shadow plunged and bucked, tried to spin, was flung forward, then sucked back.
Finally it staggered to a sudden stop, throwing everyone flat. The sea grabbed it and sucked it out again, then flung it back to the shore, this time hard enough that everyone heard the harsh grating and the sudden crack. Onund howled into the wind and rain, wolfing out his pain and outrage at what was happening to the ship, as if it was his own bones breaking and not planks, but the sudden tilt of the deck flung everyone sideways, some of them completely out of the ship.
Then there was a longer time of struggling in knee-deep water that slapped and sucked folk off their feet as they staggered to the shingle, hefting precious sea-chests. Kaetilmund and Stick-Starer fought through the surf and heaved lines ashore, looking for good fastenings.
Finally, safe ashore and looking back, Crowbone saw that the storm was growing and spat salt water as the crew gathered slowly beside him, slipping their sea-chests down and rubbing the rain and spray off their faces.
‘Cracked like an egg,’ roared Onund against the whine and howl of the wind and did not need to say more; the Shadow lay canted on the shingle and sand, the white of splintered wood bright on her.
‘As well we made it to the shore,’ Stick-Starer yelled back. ‘Now we need shelter.’
‘At least someone has found a mate,’ Murrough bawled and stabbed his axe towards the yellow bitch, then stumped off up the rain-hissed beach, laughing.
